Gaddafi loyalists rally at crowded border crossing

Pro-Gaddafi loyalists have staged a rally at the border point where foreign workers are scrambling to flee Libya's internal strife.

As 5,000 Bangladeshi men massed in the no man's land to cross into Tunisia, about 25 Libyans arrived in large trucks ostensibly bringing food, aid and water.

Filmed by Libyan television, they waved banners and chanted pro-Gaddafi slogans insisting to foreign journalists the situation in Libya is safe and calm.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) now has 1,500 tents at the border.

They shelter 15,000 men, but with 15,000 more arriving from Libya every day, many thousands of men are still sleeping in the open.

The UNHCR says only around 2,500 men can be shipped away from the border per day.

It says the gap between the number of those arriving and those going will tip the situation into crisis unless Western nations apply the same resources they use to evacuate their own expatriates from Libya.

The protection officer for UNHCR camp near the border, Hovig Etyemezian, says there is no reliable evidence of how many people are still heading for the Tunisian border.

"The incoming is way bigger than the outgoing and therefore the only solution is to bring more ships, big military airplanes to take out people," he said.

A French aircraft carrier is steaming towards the Tunisian coast and British aircraft are expected at the nearby island of Djerba today.